[60] The first edition of Karl Simrock's Rheinsagen came out in 1836. This was not accessible. The edition of 1837, "zweite, vermehrte Auflage," contains 168 poems, 572 pages; this contains Simrock's "Ballade von der Lorelei." The edition of 1841 also contains Simrock's "Der Teufel und die Lorelei." The book contains 455 pages, 218 poems. The sixth edition (1809) contains 231 poems. In all editions the poems are arranged in geographical order from Südersee to Graubünden. Alexander Kaufmann's Quellenangaben und Bemerkungen zu Kart Simrocks Rheinsagen throws no new light on the Lorelei-legend.
[61] Cf. Heinrich Heines sämtliche Werke, edited by Walzel, Fränkel, Krähe, Leitzmann, and Peterson. Leipzig. 1911, II, 408. So far as I have looked into the matter, Walzel stands alone in this belief, though Mücke, as has been pointed out above, anticipated him in the statement that Heine drew on Schreiber in this case. But Mücke thinks that Heine also knew Loeben.
[62] The reference in question reads as follows: "Ich will kein Wort verlieren über den Wert dieses unverdaulichen Machwerkes [Les Burgraves], das mit allen möglichen Prätensionen auftritt, namentlich mit historischen, obgleich alles Wissen Victor Hugos über Zeit und Ort, wo sein Stück spielt, lediglich aus der französischen Uebersetzung von Schreibers Handbuch für Rheinreisende geschöpft, ist." This was written March 20, 1843 (see Elster edition, VI. 344).
[63] Aloys Wilhelm Schreiber (1763-1840) was a teacher in the Lyceum at Baden-Baden (1800-1802), professor of aesthetics at Heidelberg (1802-13) where he was intimate with the Voss family, historiographer at Karlsruhe (1813-26), and in 1826 he retired and became a most prolific writer. He interested himself in guidebooks for travelers. His manuals contain maps, distances, expense accounts, historical sketches, in short, about what the modern Baedeker contains with fewer statistics and more popular description. His books appeared in German, French, and English. In 1812 he published his Handbuch für Reisende am Rhein von Schaffhausen bis Holland, to give only a small part of the wordy title, and in 1818 he brought out a second, enlarged edition of the same work with an appendix containing 17 Volkssagen aus den Gegenden am Rhein und am Taunus, the sixteenth of which is entitled "Die Jungfrau auf dem Lurley." His books were exceedingly popular in their day and are still obtainable. Of the one here in question, Von Weech (Allgem. deut. Biog., XXXII, 471) says: "Sein Handbuch für Reisende am Rhein, dessen Anhang eine wertvolle Sammlung rheinischer Volkssagen enthält, war lange der beliebteste Führer auf Rheinreisen." There are 7 volumes of his manuals in the New York Public Library, and one, Traditions populaires du Rhin, Heidelberg, 1830 (2d ed.), is in the Columbia Library. It contains 144 legends and beautiful engravings. (The writer has just [October 15, 1915] secured the four Volumes of Schreiber's Rheinische Geschichten und Sagen. The fourth volume, published in 1830. is now a very rare book.)
[64] The remainder of Schreiher's plot is as follows: The news of the infatuated hero's death so grieved the old Count that ho determined to have the Lorelei captured, dead or alive. One of his captains, aided by a number of brave followers, set out on the hazardous expedition. First, they surround the rock on which the Lorelei sits, and. then three of the most courageous ascend to her seat and determine to kill her, so that the danger of her repealing her former deed maybe forever averted. But when they reach her and she hoars what they intend to do, she simply smiles and invokes the aid of her Father, who immediately sends two white horses—two white waves—up the Rhine, and. after leaping down to the Rhine, she is safely carried away by these. She was never again seen, but her voice was frequently heard as she mocked, in echo, the songs of the sailors on her paternal stream.
[65] It is not simply in the appendix of Schreiber's Handbuch that he discusses the legend of Lorelei, but also in the scientific part of it. Concerning the Lorelei rock he says (pp. 174-75): "Ein wunderbarer Fels schiebt sich jetzt dem Schiffer gleichsam in seine Bahn—es ist der Lurley (von Lure, Lauter, und Ley, Schiefer) aus welchem ein Echo den Zuruf der Vorbeifahrendem fünfzehnmal wiederholt. Diesen Schieferfels bewohnte in grauen Zeiten eine Undine, welche die Schiffenden durch ihr Zurufen ins Verderben lockte."
[66] Brockhaus says (p. xxiv): "Die einfache Sage von den beiden feindlichen Brüdern am Rhein, van denen die Trümmer ihrer Bürgen selbst noch Die Brüder heissen ist in A. Schreiber's Auswahl von Sagen jener Gegenden zu lesen." Usener's tragedy is published In full in this number of Urania, pp. 383-442.
[67] Cf. Elster edition, IV, 406-9. The circumstantial way in which
Heine retells this story is almost sufficient to lead one to
believe that he had Schreiber at hand when he wrote this part of
Elementargeister; but he says that he did not.
[68] Discussion as to the first conception of Heine's Rabbi are
found in: Heinrich Heines Fragment; Der Rabbi von Bacharach,
by Lion Feuchtwanger, München, 1907; Heinrich Heine und Der Rabbi
von Bacharach, by Gustav Karpeles, Wien, 1895.
[69] The poem is one of the Junge Leiden, published in 1821, Elster (I, 490) says: "Eine bekannte Sage, mit einzelnen vielfach wiederkehrenden uralten Zügen, dargestellt In Simrocks Rheinsagen." Simrock had, of course, done nothing on the Rheinsagen in 1821, being then only nineteen years old and an inconspicuous student at Bonn. Walzel says (I. 449.): "Mit einem andern Ausgang ist die Sage in dem von Heine vielbenutzten Handbuch für Reisende am Rhein von Aloys Schreiber (Heidelberg, 1816) überliefert." The edition of this work in the New York Public Library has no printed date, but 1818 is written in. Walzel may be correct. The outcome of Heine's poem is, after all, not so different: In Schreiber, both brothers relinquish their clalms to the girl and remain unmarried; in Heine the one kills the other and in this way neither wins the girl.